Kraken
Leviathan |scientific = Microcosmus marinus Microcosmus sp. |kanji = |romaji = |body = Cephalopod |height = |length = Several meters Over 10 shipsPirates of the Caribbean. |weight = |sentience = Sentient |sapience = Non-sapient |aggressive = High to Extreme |language = |origin = 12/14th-century Norway |habitat = Norwegian sea |diet = Carnivore |lifespan = |locomotion = Siphonic jet propulsion (supposed) |sub = Kraken octopus Colossal octopus |related = Hafgufa |status = Data Deficient |universe = Norse mythology |creator = |designer = |actor = }} Kraken is the most well-known name of a supposed legendary deep sea monster, which uses its tentacles to sink ships. Etymology The English word "kraken" is taken from Norwegian. In Norwegian and Swedish, "kraken" is the definite form of "krake", a word designating an unhealthy animal or something twisted (cognate with the English "crook" and "crank"). In modern German, "krake" (plural and declined singular: "kraken") means octopus, but can also refer to the legendary monster.Wikipedia article on the Kraken. Norse origins In the late 14th century version of the Old Icelandic saga Örvar-Oddr is an inserted episode of a journey bound for Helluland (Baffin Island) which takes the protagonists through the Greenland Sea, and here they spot two massive sea-monsters called Hafgufa ("sea mist") and Lyngbakr ("heather-back"). The Hafgufa is believed to be a reference to the kraken: :"Now I will tell you that there are two sea-monsters. One is called the hafgufa (sea-mist), another lyngbakr (heather-back). It (the lyngbakr) is the largest whale in the world, but the hafgufa is the hugest monster in the sea. It is the nature of this creature to swallow men and ships, and even whales and everything else within reach. It stays submerged for days, then rears its head and nostrils above surface and stays that way at least until the change of tide. Now, that sound we just sailed through was the space between its jaws, and its nostrils and lower jaw were those rocks that appeared in the sea, while the lyngbakr was the island we saw sinking down. However, Ogmund Tussock has sent these creatures to you by means of his magic to cause the death of you (Odd) and all your men. He thought more men would have gone the same way as those that had already drowned (i.e. to the lyngbakr which wasn't an island, and sank), and he expected that the hafgufa would have swallowed us all. Today I sailed through its mouth because I knew that it had recently surfaced." The Kraken is also believed to rise to the surface during Ragnarok.Age of Mythology. Early scientific studies on the kraken After returning from Greenland, the anonymous author of the Old Norwegian scientific work Konungs skuggsjá (circa 1250) described in detail the physical characteristics and feeding behavior of these beasts. The narrator proposed there must only be two in existence, stemming from the observation that the beasts have always been sighted in the same parts of the Greenland Sea, and that each seemed incapable of reproduction, as there was no increase in their numbers. :"There is a fish that is still unmentioned, which it is scarcely advisable to speak about on account of its size, because it will seem to most people incredible. There are only a very few who can speak upon it clearly, because it is seldom near land nor appears where it may be seen by fishermen, and I suppose there are not many of this sort of fish in the sea. Most often in our tongue we call it hafgufa. Nor can I conclusively speak about its length in ells, because the times he has shown before men, he has appeared more like land than like a fish. Neither have I heard that one had been caught or found dead; and it seems to me as though there must be no more than two in the oceans, and I deem that each is unable to reproduce itself, for I believe that they are always the same ones. Then too, neither would it do for other fish if the hafgufa were of such a number as other whales, on account of their vastness, and how much subsistence that they need. It is said to be the nature of these fish that when one shall desire to eat, then it stretches up its neck with a great belching, and following this belching comes forth much food, so that all kinds of fish that are near to hand will come to present location, then will gather together, both small and large, believing they shall obtain there food and good eating; but this great fish lets its mouth stand open the while, and the gap is no less wide than that of a great sound or fjord, And nor may the fish avoid running together there in their great numbers. But as soon as its stomach and mouth is full, then it locks together its jaws and has the fish all caught and enclosed, that before greedily came there looking for food." Carolus Linnaeus classified the kraken as a cephalopod, designating the scientific name microcosmus marinus in the first edition of his Systema Naturae (1735), a taxonomic classification of living organisms. The creature was excluded from later editions. Linnaeus's later work, Fauna Suecica (1746) calls the creature singulare monstrum, "a unique monster", and says of it Habitare fertur in mari Norwegico, ipse non dum animal vidi, "It is said to inhabit the seas of Norway, but I have not seen this animal". Claims and assumptions unrelated to study Kraken were also extensively described by Erik Pontoppidan, diocese of Bergen, in his Det Forste Forsorg paa Norges Naturlige Historie ("Natural History of Norway", Copenhagen, 1752–3). Pontoppidan made several claims regarding kraken, including the notion that the creature was sometimes mistaken for an island and that the real danger to sailors was not the creature itself but rather the whirlpool left in its wake. However, Pontoppidan also described the destructive potential of the giant beast: "it is said that if creature's arms were to lay hold of the largest man-of-war, they would pull it down to the bottom". According to Pontoppidan, Norwegian fishermen often took the risk of trying to fish over kraken, since the catch was so plentiful (hence the saying "you must have fished on kraken"). Pontoppidan also proposed that a specimen of the monster, "perhaps a young and careless one", was washed ashore and died at Alstahaug in 1680. By 1755, Pontoppidan's description of the kraken had been translated into English. 18th Century Swedish author Jacob Wallenberg described the kraken in the 1781 work Min son på galejan ("My son on the galley"): :"... Kraken, also called the Crab-fish, which is not that huge, for heads and tails counted, he is no larger than our Öland is wide less than 16 km ... He stays at the sea floor, constantly surrounded by innumerable small fishes, who serve as his food and are fed by him in return: for his meal, (if I remember correctly what E. Pontoppidan writes,) lasts no longer than three months, and another three are then needed to digest it. His excrements nurture in the following an army of lesser fish, and for this reason, fishermen plumb after his resting place ... Gradually, Kraken ascends to the surface, and when he is at ten to twelve fathoms, the boats had better move out of his vicinity, as he will shortly thereafter burst up, like a floating island, spurting water from his dreadful nostrils and making ring waves around him, which can reach many miles. Could one doubt that this is the Leviathan of Job?" n 1802, the French malacologist Pierre Dénys de Montfort recognized the existence of two kinds of giant octopus in Histoire Naturelle Générale et Particulière des Mollusques, an encyclopedic description of mollusks. Montfort claimed that the first type, the kraken octopus, had been described by Norwegian sailors and American whalers, as well as ancient writers such as Pliny the Elder. The much larger second type, the colossal octopus, was reported to have attacked a sailing vessel from Saint-Malo, off the coast of Angola. Montfort later dared more sensational claims. He proposed that ten British warships, including the captured French ship of the line Ville de Paris, which had mysteriously disappeared one night in 1782, must have been attacked and sunk by giant octopuses. The British, however, knew - courtesy of a survivor from the Ville de Paris - that the ships had been lost in a hurricane off the coast of Newfoundland in September 1782, resulting in a disgraceful revelation for Montfort. Possible explanations Since the late 18th century, kraken have been depicted in a number of ways, primarily as large octopus-like creatures, and it has often been alleged that Pontoppidan's kraken might have been based on sailors' observations of the giant squid (which, according to specimens recovered, inhabits many regions, especially on Northern Europe, Greenland, North American eastern coasts and a portion of Northern Caribbean). In the earliest descriptions, however, the creatures were more crab-like than octopus-like, and generally possessed traits that are associated with large whales rather than with giant squid. Some traits of kraken resemble undersea volcanic activity occurring in the Iceland region, including bubbles of water; sudden, dangerous currents; and appearance of new islets. The Triassic kraken ] Mark McMenamin and Dianna Schulte McMenamin argued that a formation of multiple ichthyosaur fossils (belonging to the genus shonisaurus) placed together at Berlin–Ichthyosaur State Park may represent evidence of a gigantic cephalopod or Triassic Kraken that killed the ichthyosaurs and intentionally arranged their bones in the unusual pattern seen at the site.Wikipedia article on Mark McMenamin. Opponents have challenged the theory as too far-fetched to be credible and it has been characterised as pseudoscience. Paul Myers believes that a much simpler explanation is that the rows of vertebral discs may be a result of the ichthyosaurs having fallen to one side or the other after death and rotting in that position, while Ryosuke Motani, a paleontologist at the University of California, Davis, has alternately proposed that the bones may have been moved together by ocean currents because of their circular shape. McMenamin has dismissed both of these concerns as not being in accord with either the sequence of bone placement or the hydrodynamics of the site. McMenamin was later quoted as saying: "When you consider that all other explanations for the Ichthyosaur death assemblage have failed, the plausibility goes up. It is currently the leading hypothesis, and none of the critics so far has proposed a fatal or even relatively significant objection." Mark and Dianna McMenamin presented new evidence favoring the existence of the hypothesized Triassic Kraken on October 31, 2013 at the Geological Society of America annual meeting in Denver, Colorado. Commentator David Fastovsky, speaking to the press after the talk, attempted to critique McMenamins' quantitative argument, but Fastovsky neglected to account for the fact that the vertebral array is both hydrodynamically unstable and could not have formed by passive collapse of a vertebral column because the vertebrae are out of order. McMenamin's probabilistic calculations assume currents strong enough to displace individual vertebrae, but the main argument holds even if no currents were present. Adolf Seilacher has noted that this ichthyosaur bone arrangement "has never been observed at other localities". Kraken in popular culture In the Pirates of the Caribbean series, the Kraken - often referred to as a leviathan - is a giant sea monster, and the pet animal of Davy Jones. Closely resembling a giant squid, the Kraken was a fearsome creature, said to be the length of 10 ships. Its tentacles could reach to the top of a ship's mainmast and capsize a fully-rigged vessel with little effort. A single one of the suckers on the Kraken's tentacles were strong enough to pull the flesh clean away from a sailor's face in a fantastic way, and under Davy Jones' command, the Kraken brought the Flying Dutchman ever more unfortunate souls, dying sailors forever impressed into servitude on the cursed ship. In Clash of the Titans, the Kraken is a sea monster of tremendous size and strength, which can swim at high speeds and is reffered to as a titan by the Stygian witches. In the original 1981 film, it is the pet of Poseidon, and Zeus orders it to destroy Argos to punish its king Acrisius, for casting his wife and Perseus into the sea. The goddess of the sea, Thetis, then unleashes it on the city of Joppa, using it as an excuse to punish Perseus. Andromeda was offered to be sacrificed on Thetis' decree as Poseidon releases the Kraken. Perseus uses Medusa's Head turns the Kraken to stone. In the 2010 remake, the Kraken is seen in the beginning of the movie, as the narrator explains the creature was created by Hades in order to slay the titans. After the war, the god was tricked by his siblings into ruling the underworld. That action invoked Hades' hatred, as he was betrayed even after his crucial part in the Titanomachy. It is assumed that Zeus forced Hades to lock up the Kraken so he wouldn't harm anyone, as the gods feared its power. The Kraken was released onto Argos to destroy it, but Perseus slayed it with Medusa's head that turned it to stone. The 2010 Kraken was mostly designed by Jerad Marantz. In Clash of the Titans: The Videogame, a dramatically altered Kraken is fought as a boss. Category:Aquatic Lifeforms Category:Legendary Creatures Category:DD Category:Cryptids Category:Non-sapient Beings Category:Carnivores Category:Fauna Category:Cephalopods Category:Monsters Category:Sentient Beings Category:Norse mythology